Ex-Minnesotan Randy Schekman is a Nobel Prize winner

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There’s a Minnesotan among today’s Nobel Prize winners. Karl Ritter and Mailin Rising of the AP say: “Americans James Rothman and Randy Schekman and German-born researcher Thomas Sudhof won the 2013 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries on how hormones, enzymes and other key substances are transported within cells. This traffic control system has helped researchers gain a better understanding of a range of diseases including diabetes and disorders affecting the immune system, the committee said. … ‘It was pretty clear from an early age that [Schekman] was quite smart,’ said [Mike] Kopman, who grew up a block away from his cousin in north Minneapolis. He said Schekman, the oldest of five children, left Minnesota at about age 12 when his family moved to California. But he said they stayed in touch over the years, and that Schekman had visited Minnesota often over the years.”

Speaking of smart … . Jon Collins of MPR writes: “After Matt Decuir moved from Seattle to Minneapolis earlier this year, he missed the real-time apps he’d used to find out exactly when Seattle buses or trains would arrive at a stop. Metro Transit tracks each vehicle by GPS, but doesn’t present the information in an easily accessible way. … Decuir notes that Minnesotans have at least one pretty good reason to use the app, now named OMG Transit, ‘Our service is a good utility in the winter for letting you stay inside and stay warm for longer.’ OMG Transit is just one of dozens of projects that have launched as part of the civic hacking movement in the United States.”

Our soggy weekend had nothing on the Black Hills. Paul Huttner at MPR says: “They’re calling it The Black Hills ‘Megastorm.’ That’s the term thrown out by the Rapid City, S.D., National Weather Service office to describe the second highest three-day snowfall total ever recorded in the Black Hills Region. ‘Blizza-cane’ might work too. The Black Hills are still digging out and melting out from as much as 4 feet of snow and near hurricane force winds last weekend. … some Minnesotans drove right into the heart of the storm, and rode out near hurricane force wind gusts and 3 to 4 feet of snow in an RV. Linda Osburn of Garrison, Minnesota sent me word that her husband and friends rode out the intense storm in an RV in the Black Hills. Thankfully, they weathered the storm in good shape.”

OMG. Really. Paul Walsh of the Strib reports: “Two hunters both stood up at the same time in their boat in northern Minnesota, with one losing his balance and fatally shooting his partner over the weekend as they each took aim at the same target, authorities said Monday. Adam Poole, 23, of Nevis, Minn., died late Saturday afternoon on a river connecting 3rd and 4th Crow Wing Lakes, about 15 miles east of Park Rapids, according to the Hubbard County Sheriff’s Office. ‘They both stood up in the boat in an effort to shoot at a duck,’ a statement from the Sheriff’s Office read. ‘The hunting partner lost his balance, and the shotgun he was carrying discharged. Poole was struck in the head and died from his injuries.’ ”

Every time someone jokes about Jesse Ventura … the Governor … ask them whom they prefer, The Body or the Tea Party?The AP tells us: “Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura has compared the federal government shutdown to an act of terrorism and he’s pushing a petition for people to voice their displeasure. Ventura’s online petition had hundreds of signatures as of Monday morning. It calls on leaders in Washington to end the nearly weeklong partial government shutdown that has idled workers and disrupted services. The former independent governor, who left office in 2003, says he thinks it’s wrong that the government was shut down over a bid to block President Barack Obama’s health care law. He says the move was akin to terrorism.” Does this mean we get to use drones on the perps?

Really? David Unze of the St. Cloud Times reports: “Testing of soil excavated by St. Cloud State University researchers in far northern Minnesota shows a site in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness could have been home to one of the oldest settlements in the state. More testing needs to be done before any conclusions can be made about the sites on Knife Lake, along the U.S.-Canada border, said Mark Muñiz, associate professor of anthropology at St. Cloud State. … Muñiz has been testing his theory that those people lived at the edge of the glaciers as they receded, and they could have been there 11,000-12,500 years ago or earlier. Previously held beliefs were that the glaciers left behind so much flooding in northern Minnesota that the earliest humans to inhabit the state did so in the south. … Test results from soil collected from sites at Knife Lake show evidence of habitation 16,400 years ago, plus or minus 2,000 years, Muñiz said.”

It seems the bloom is off … Sam Cook of the Duluth News Tribune reports: “The allure of shooting or trapping a wolf in Minnesota may be declining. Applications for Minnesota’s wolf hunting and trapping licenses dropped by almost half this year, said Dan Stark, large carnivore specialist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Last year, the inaugural year of Minnesota’s formal wolf hunt, about 23,500 hunters and trappers applied for licenses, Stark said. This year, that number dropped to about 13,000.”

Today in Catholic sex scandals … . The AP says: “The Roman Catholic Diocese of Duluth has removed a retired priest from public ministry due to what it considered a credible accusation of sexually abusing a child. A statement issued by the diocese on Sunday said the Rev. Cornelius Kelleher was recently accused of abusing a girl sometime when he was pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Chisholm from 1975 to 1986. The decision means he is no longer allowed to function as a priest in retirement. The statement did not give details about the alleged abuse. It said no criminal charges or lawsuits have been filed over the accusation.”

City Pages’ Kevin Hoffman has nothing new to say about Laura Brod but sees every reason to make fun of a New York Times article on the Twin Cities dating scene: “The New York Times recently visited Minneapolis to explore our dating scene and the resulting article may be the funniest thing you ever read about the sex life of your friends. To hear the Gray Lady tell it, we’re all a bunch of shot-and-a-beer drinking hipsters who cluster around Uptown to sleep with our friends’ exes in a desperate attempt to secure companionship before the inevitable nine-month winter snow-in. … Also: Big Buck Hunter plays a major role in our mating rituals. You can read the whole article here, but allow us to provide you with the Cliff’s Notes: Our hipsters are actually a sub-species known as Hipsterus Mineapolite known for their unusual politeness. While their counterparts in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles are defined (and derided) for their blasé pose, their Twin Cities brothers and sisters, while blessed with the same clunky glasses, working-class-chic attire and fixed-gear bikes, retain the openness and generosity of the region. New Yorkers can see through our ‘too cool for school’ dance moves and recognize our interior Lutheran sensibilities. ‘Minnesota Nice,’ that affectionately mocking appellation, shines through even the densest layers of flannel.”

For its first year in Minnesota, we had a lot of interest. But here, in the winter, we would have even more interest for a purple burger, flaming cocktail made with lighter fluid and a fishing lure that sang the Minnesota Rowser.

People are going to realize that hunting a canine for the thrill and the pelt isn’t as much fun as hunting for 10 pounds of venison sausage, steaks and chops.

There will always be a few people who will do it, but sitting over a deer gut pile in minus 10 degree weather will never be as much fun as sitting on Mille Lacs in a heated fish house with the Vikings on TV.

And, NO, we CAN’T use drones, but that’s ironic considering that the Tea Party types are already “drones” if of a different variety: the unthinking worker bees for the fabulously wealthy, psychologically twisted “conservatives” who, control their media sources and campaign financial resources and, thereby, hold their collective leashes while requiring them to pursue policies that destroy their own live while enriching those wealthy leash holders.